Trump's First Really Bad Week

It was an ugly weekend for Donald Trump — his first in a primary election season that for Republicans has been somewhere between a surprise and an embarrassment. Not only did Ted Cruz win two of Saturday’s four primaries and caucuses, trouncing Trump in Kansas and Maine, but Trump barely beat Cruz in Louisiana and Kentucky. Trump consistently underperformed polls going into the contests.

There was not a great deal of polling for these elections, but here are the results as compared to the RealClearPolitics average of polls in each state, with each candidate’s numbers representing his percentage of the vote received:

Maine (caucus): Cruz 45.9, Trump 32.6, Kasich 12.2, Rubio 8 (Cruz +23 over Trump). There was no poll of this race, but I’d bet money that a poll would not have shown this result, not least because Trump recently received the endorsement of Maine’s Governor Paul Le Page.

Donald Trump’s response was to say he wanted to “take on Ted one on one,” and that Cruz should have done well in Maine because “it’s very close to Canada.” Trump also opined that Cruz cannot win California, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania — which may well be true, at least as long as other non-Trump candidates are in the running — and he called for Marco Rubio to get out of the race.